


Shadows Taller Than Souls

by junkienicky



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, dark!eve, murder spree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:02:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28782402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkienicky/pseuds/junkienicky
Summary: Spots of blood on her hands, spots of blood on her face and in the trance and blurred vision that abides it, all she can focus on is the grip of the gun in her hand and paranoia in her mind.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	Shadows Taller Than Souls

**Author's Note:**

> Oh crikey this is the first time I’ve written in over a year.

_Ears are such fragile things_. It’s the first thing Eve can think as she presses her hands of each of them – the right hand still gripping the wet, sticky crimson Glock as she squints through the noise. The ringing is what’s most unbearable, even amongst the massacre surrounding her (all stuff she’s fully familiar with.)

She staggers about for a moment, hoping to find her balance, but it doesn’t help that her eyes struggle to focus in on anything. Open or closed, it’s just a haze of bright colours and shapes submerged in one numbness.

Her foot wobbles and a tiny clanging sound of metal follows. There’s bullet shells everywhere, bodies lying around empty of their souls (or just so tiny they’re in a complete dormant state. Everlasting death.) Some of the bodies, Eve eventually notices, look comedic in the way they just flopped and impacted the marble floor after she’d just fired a hole through their chest. It’s strange. It’s like none of them are real people, really. Just mannequins all trained up in tight suits with nothing real left inside of them except what they’d been built up for. Still, doesn’t matter now. Eve is too occupied to think coherently or care about any of them.

 _But did I check?_ She wonders. You see, this has been her only target, her only consistent thought for the past year and a half. There can be no escapees, no survivors, no weasel who manages to twist their way out and summon an army from the snap of their fingers. They planned it to the very last microscopic detail and went over it through and through. Eve idly scans the room, forces her ears to listen as the ringing fades. She steadies herself and counts the bodies. The one slumped on the corner, the ones under the table and the ones that didn’t make it out of the marvellous doors. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Exactly twelve. All of the same names and faces on the files in the exact same place. It seems too easy.

Everything is quiet and still but something, somewhere, feels wrong. Something tiny, unidentifiable, and untraceable, and Eve’s chest tightens as well as her grip around the Glock. Goosebumps raise on her skin all up and down her spine to the back of her neck. It’s like being studied afar by a ghost.

She finches at a voice calling her name, aiming her gun instinctively but she immediately eases when the figure walks into view. It’s her, Villanelle, with splashes of blood on her hands but not much elsewhere. Eve notices the woman approaching her with a slight troubled expression, almost like she wasn’t fully sure if Eve heard her calling her name. Villanelle does this often these days. Her face is a chameleon of expression yet the one she settles on the most when she looks at Eve is always something of concern. Why is that? It almost drives Eve insane.

“Eve,” Villanelle says again, much closer and clearer now with her hand gripping Eve’s wrist. She pressed her fingers around the blood-soaked gun and lowers it the rest of the way for her, wondering if the blood is Eve’s or someone else’s. Truthfully, Villanelle can’t make it out. “It’s OK,” she reassures her, shaking her body a little and out of her trance. “It’s done now. All of it.”

Eve blinks, gripping Villanelle back but frowns, shaking her head.

“No, no,” Eve whimpers, squeezing Villanelle tighter.

“Yes. You can stop now, Eve.” She pulls the sticky gun from her and lets it drop to the floor, fixating her gaze into Eve’s eyes. “We did it. You did it, Eve. We can go now.” Villanelle smiles with an undefinable burning glint of accomplishment in her demeanour. It’s like something she never realised she had always been waiting for until this very moment. You could almost say she looked proud.

She caresses Eve’s face in her cold red hands, smearing blood along her neck and cheeks. “We can go now,” Villanelle whispers, pressing her lips onto Eve’s, and for a moment, Eve relaxes into the kiss; allowing for a second of tranquillity to suffice before she pulls back, displaced and fearful.

“No, I made a mistake, I forgot something. This is wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Villanelle asks, bemused. She approaches Eve again, gently pulling the shaken woman closer to her. After everything, she’s never quite seen Eve appear so unravelled. Perhaps it’s some kind of superstition? Though Villanelle has never known Eve to have any. “We took care of everything,” she shushes her. And Eve seems to listen as she attempts to steady her breathing and gulps down the lump in her throat.

“Yeah,” Eve says wary but in agreement. And then, the gravity of their vanquishment beginning to set in, she smiles. It’s small, at first, but then it grows into a shaky chuckle, contagious to Villanelle who laughs out in triumph unable to contain this newfound release of joy –

– and then it’s cut short. The tail of her laugh is torn off by the rippling echo of a sniper’s rifle and her smile instantaneously wears thin.

“What?” Is all Eve lets out, and her face floods with a desperate battle of confusion and horror. She almost laughs at the absurdity as she seizes Villanelle by both arms, forcing her upright and watching the colour drain from her cheeks.

Villanelle ducks her head down to look at her left side and the rapid spread of red gushing across the whiteness of her shirt. “Oh.” Is all she can conclude, sad and surprised, as she loses her balance and unceremoniously crashes down with Eve falling with her. “Lousy shot,” she rasps, withering with stupor and laboured breathing. “If they wanted me dead straight away, they should’ve aimed for my head. They always want to embarrass me nowadays, don’t they? Assholes.”

Eve ignored her, pancaking. “Don’t do that,” she stammers pressing her hands onto Villanelle’s belly. Almost the same place she once impaled her with a knife. Feels like a lifetime ago. “I said, I said, I knew something was wrong and look I forgot –

“Hey,” Villanelle croaks. She grips Eve’s hands with her own and forces her eyes to stay open. “I forgot too, OK? Must’ve missed one out. Something so stupid. Rule of thumb. I guess we got too arrogant in the end,” her chuckle twists into a groan and all Eve can do is squeeze her by the shoulders and hold onto her, utterly helpless. “Listen,” Villanelle pants, pressing herself close to Eve – close to her ear. “It’s important, OK, just…Remember back when we left London and went straight to Croatia? When you slit that guy’s throat and I asked you why and you said because he didn’t seem right. That he’d been watching us. Because you thought he was one of _them_ and that he was just waiting for the right moment to kill us and you were right?”

Eve nods.

“And then – ” Villanelle wheezes, struggling out a laugh. “And then they were everywhere. Hits all over chasing us for miles but we just ran and ran, laughing, and it felt like we were running forever.”

“Yeah,” Eve sobs.

“And when we finally stopped you said…”

“I said it doesn’t matter if it’s the last thing I do, even if I’m running, hiding and planning all my life. I’m going to take out the Twelve so long as you’re with me, so long as you help me and we do this together.”

“And look at what you did,” Villanelle marvels, brushing her fingers along Eve’s face. “But I need you to do a thing for me.”

“Please don’t go,” Eve interjects while a stray tear drips from her eye and gets lost in the pool of crimson. “Please don’t leave me,” she begs, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“God, this is not how I thought this would feel at all,” Villanelle grumbles.

“How does it feel?”

“Oh God, it burns, Eve. But I feel so cold.”

“Don’t say that,” Eve weeps, trying to hold Villanelle up in her arms.

“Eve, listen. You need to do me one last thing, please.”

“No.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re really stubborn?”

“They never really stop. I think you might’ve mentioned it a few times, which is a bit hypocritical.”

“Well stop being it now, I’m dying here.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Well. I will be in a minute.”

“I know what you’re going to say, and I’m telling you no!” Eve insists. Ignoring her, Villanelle continues.

“I need you to run. Run like we did on that night. Don’t ever stop, keep going even when you feel like you’re safe, _especially_ when you feel like you’re safe, don’t stop. Because the last thing you do isn’t here, Eve. It’s somewhere else. It’s not here. And you need to let go of me now.”

“I said no.”

“Eve. If you love me –

“Don’t fucking manipulate me, Oksana. I made my choice a long time ago and I’m not leaving you.”

Villanelle smirks, pulling Eve’s head closer to hers. “But you have to. Let’s not be naïve, every second you waste sitting here is jeopardy. Someone is patiently enjoying this show.”

“I don’t care.”

Villanelle huffs in surrender. “I’m a bad influence.”

“You’re fucking terrible,” Eve agrees. “But we know in comparison I’m no saint.”

“You’re a show-off.”

“Look at us. Arguing now,” Eve laughs, croakily.

“Arguing? I thought we were flirting.”

“You always think that.”

“It’s funny,” Villanelle mutters after a pregnant pause. “I always thought we’d be the ones to kill each other. I never imagined it like this. Such a bad look.”

“Sometimes we got close,” Eve smiles. “Sometimes I pictured us. Your hands reaching for the knife and mine wrapped around your throat. Suppose we were too weak in the end. We always were bad for each other. Pushing each other to the limit. But we never could go that far again. And look where we are now,” she chuckles. “Bill would have a field day about this.”

A rifle blast ripples once again and Eve yelps onto her side in pain. “No, Eve,” Villanelle whimpers, tilting her head to a side and watches her bunch up. “I told you to go.”

“Sorry, baby. You know I don’t follow orders. Especially yours,” Eve grunts through gritted teeth. “Konstantin was right.”

“About what?”

“Something he said once. Before we killed him. Loving someone to death isn’t really all that healthy, as it turns out.” Eve grips her side, feeling blood spill through her fingers.

“Thank you.”

“What for?” Eve pants.

“I don’t know,” Villanelle sighs, cheek pressed to the floor. “I don’t have the energy to compose a monologue right now.”

“Shit, I’m scared,” Eve groans.

“Me too,” Villanelle reaches for Eve’s hand. “I’ll wait for you,” she mumbles, closing her eyes. “Prosto derzhis' krepche, moya dorogaya.”

“You won’t be waiting long. Nous rencontrerons de l'autre côté.”

**Author's Note:**

> Four things.
> 
> 1\. Title is from Stairway to Heaven.
> 
> 2\. Didn’t have a lot of time to proofread this, so I’ll imagine there’s countless mistakes but I hope they weren’t too distracting. I’m sorry if the Russian and French weren’t translated well, I had no one to check so I went by Google translate. This is also longer than what I planned it to be to the point where I feel it isn’t really in character. Sorry for that.
> 
> 3\. Yes I have a headcanon that Eve can speak French.
> 
> 4\. And forth and foremost, thank you for reading this mess and I apologise it’s so bleak. 💀


End file.
